Lessons from Glitch

It's the one-year anniversary of the shuttering of Glitch, the lovely, sweetly fun game created by Tiny Speck. On the anniversary, Janice has written a fine remembrance for the game, which was quite unlike anything else.

What do we expect from games? Amusement, sure, escape. But I had the sensation that Glitch was making me into a slightly better version of myself. Real-life useful traits like generosity, patience, and playfulness were rewarded in the game. Playing the game always felt like winning, which was a refreshing sensation; many games are designed around making the player feel rushed, either in trying to beat the clock or another player. In other games, we fail repeatedly in a completing task, dying but earning endless do-overs. Again, Glitch was different; dying was possible, but it took concerted effort and purposeful neglect to make your character experience death.

After the game closed, we searched around for a few months, looking for “the new Glitch”, but we didn’t find it. We grieved and moved on.

Recently the ultra-cool folks at TinySpeck, the company that created Glitch, released many of the digital assets of the game to the Public Domain. We were also a HUGE fans of the music, some of which is also available now. The distinct images and sounds that created that world are a trigger for a lot of memories, which prompted me to reflect on half a dozen life lessons I learned from playing Glitch.